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TUNBRIDGE WELLS – ITS BEGINNINGS & BEYOND 019 The Middle Ages
By the time the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, Kent remained the most densely wooded part of the country. Specifi c mentions were made of Tudeley and Tonbridge where Richard Fitz Gilbert de Clare built a motte and bailey castle after the Battle of Hastings. To supply and maintain it, Richard created a circular area of land, about
fi ve miles in each direction, around it called The Lowy, which incorporated
The making of a town
Several decades after the discovery of the Chalybeate Spring, a building boom was creating a fashionable spa town, with The Pantiles already in place by 1700. A century later, the town was becoming a retirement haven for wealthy Londoners, drawn by the cheaper cost of living and a reliable (fi ve-hour) stagecoach service to the
capital. People played cricket, watched horse racing or visited the High Rocks, a popular tourist destination. In 1835, Tunbridge Wells became a town with powers of self-government and its own police force. It was made a royal borough in 1889 and Mayor David Salomons held the country’s fi rst motor show here in 1895, the year that the Nevill Ground was opened.
Modern Tunbridge Wells
• In 1909 King Edward VII granted the town a ‘Royal’ prefix. • It was also a hotbed of suffragette activity – the centenary of which is being marked this year. The ladies were blamed when the Nevill Cricket Pavilion burned down in 1913. • Tunbridge Wells survived two world wars, experiencing relatively little bomb damage although the infl ux of refugees and evacuees from London in 1939 severely stretched resources. The town was considered a strategic point on the road to London and Number 78 Mount
Ephraim became Kent, Sussex and Surrey’s civil defence HQ, the Army occupied Dunorlan House while the Nevill Cricket Ground hosted Field Marshal Montgomery’s troops. • By 1951 the town had one of Kent’s highest populations of elderly people. The 1960s saw a huge growth in the numbers of commuters to London and in 1974 the Borough of Tunbridge Wells was created. By 2014 overall population had reached around 114,000.
what is now Tunbridge Wells. Most of the area south of
Tonbridge became the Clares’ hunting chase, South Frith. There was probably a small settlement in nearby South Borough, with further communities (and churches) at Bidborough and Pembury by 1150 and, later, at Hawkenbury and High Brooms. Nobles began building and enclosing castles and halls in parks for hunting.
Royal connections
Tunbridge Wells has long enjoyed royal patronage. • In 1630, Queen Henrietta Maria camped near the spring, convalescing after the birth of the future Charles II. He brought his own queen to take the waters some 30 years later. • Queen Victoria visited several times, the Prince
of Wales came in 1928 and his mother, Queen Mary, shopped here six years later. During World War Two, King George VI met General Montgomery at Broadwater Down.
• The town enjoyed a visit during Jubilee Year (1977) by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Diana, Princess of Wales opened Royal Victoria Place shopping centre in 1992.
© Royal Collection Trust
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